A Note on Stieffel's Indians
In seven of his nine paintings Stieffel has executed his Indian subjects in colorful detail and with some care. Although he apparently did not know his subjects well enough to distinguish them by tribe, he does depict them in typical dress of the period. Many of them are wearing German silver ornaments of various designs about their necks, on strips of flannel attached to their hair pigtail-like, or as arm bands. At least four are wearing hair-pipe breast plates, a fact of interest to ethnologists,[40] and several wear the comical, Puritan style, tall black hats issued as annuity goods. The red and blue robes are of trades-good flannel, as probably are the leggings. Two wear buffalo robes with the skin side out and the hair side rolled over at the shoulder.[41] Two, in the Fort Keogh picture ([fig. 8]) and the Yellowstone River landscape ([fig. 10]), wear robes of the familiar, colorfully striped Hudson Bay blanketing material. Arms are conventional—bows, quivered arrows, and pipe tomahawks, with a scattering of firearms. In the Yellowstone River landscape one discrepancy should be pointed out—the canoe; the Northern Plains Indians seldom used water transport, and then generally only in the form of rafts.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For George Catlin, Gustavus Sohon, and George Gibbs, see: John C. Ewers, "Gustavus Sohon's Portraits of Flathead and Pend d'Oreille Indians, 1854," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 110, no. 7, 1948; "George Catlin, Painter of Indians and the West," in Annual Report of the ... Smithsonian Institution ... 1955, 1956, pp. 483-528; Marvin C. Ross, George Catlin, Episodes from Life Among the Indians and Last Rambles, Norman, Okla., Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1959; Harold McCracken, George Catlin and the Old Frontier, New York, Dial Press, 1959; David I. Bushnell, Jr., "Drawings by George Gibbs in the Far Northwest, 1849-1851," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 97, no. 8, 1938.
For Alfred Jacob Miller, see: Bernard DeVoto, Across the Wide Missouri, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1947; Marvin C. Ross, editor, The West of Alfred Jacob Miller, Norman, Okla., Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1951.
For Frederick Remington and Charles Russell, see: Harold McCracken, Frederick Remington, Artist of the Old West, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1947, and The Charles M. Russell Book; the Life and Work of the Cowboy Artist, Garden City, Doubleday, 1957.
[2] See: Mark H. Brown and W. R. Felton, The Frontier Years. L. A. Huffman, Photographer of the Plains, New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1955; Martin F. Schmitt and Dee Brown, Fighting Indians of the West, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948.
[3] An excellent group of these crude on-the-spot drawings and paintings is reproduced in Grace Raymond Hebard and E. A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail, 2 vols., Cleveland, The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922.
[4] No. 173740 in the U.S. National Museum.
[5] The information on Brotherton's career has been culled from: Register of Graduates and Former Cadets United States Military Academy, 1802-1946, New York, The West Point Alumni Foundation, Inc., 1946; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, vol. 1; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy, Boston, 1891-1930, vol. 3.
[6] Enlistment papers of Hermann Stieffel dated December 17, 1857, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives, Washington.
[7] Theo F. Rodenbough and William L. Haskin, The Army of the United States, New York, Maynard, Merrill & Co., 1896, pp. 471-472; Remarks on Muster Roll, Company K, 5th Infantry (hereinafter cited as Muster Roll, Co. K), August 31, 1858, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives, Washington.
[8] Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), December 31, 1859.
[9] In 1861 a private's pay was $13.00 per month with $2.00 withheld until expiration of his enlistment and $.12-1/2 withheld for support of the U.S. Soldiers' Home at Washington. (U.S. Army Regulations, 1861.)
[10] Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), October 31, 1861; December 31, 1861; April 30, 1862; June 30, 1862; December 31, 1862; February 28, 1863; April 30, 1863; February 28, 1864; June 30, 1864.
[11] Canby was murdered by the Modoc Captain Jack in 1873 while engaged in a peace conference.
[12] For details of these operations, see: The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 130 vols., Washington, War Department, 1880-1901, ser. 1, vol. 9, pp. 487-522.
[13] Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 47, pt. 2, p. 1246.
[14] Rodenbough and Haskin, op. cit. (footnote 7), p. 472; Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), April 30, 1863; June 30, 1864; October 31, 1865.
[15] The first note of such duty is in Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), February 28, 1863.
[16] See Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), 1863-1882. The muster rolls were submitted bimonthly.
[17] Ibid., June 30, 1868; February 28, 1869; April 30, 1869.
[18] Ibid., December 31, 1869; September 30, 1873; June 30, 1874.
[19] Company K was almost at full strength at the time, mustering 58 enlisted men of the 60 authorized. Ibid., September 30, 1873; Official Army Register for January 1874, Washington, Adjutant General's Office, 1874, p. 260B.
[20] Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), August 31, 1876.
[21] Frederick Remington has pictured this surrender for us, but he was not an eye witness.
[22] Muster Roll, Co. K, op. cit. (footnote 7), August 31, 1878, to June 30, 1882; Certificate of Disability for Discharge, Private Hermann Stieffel, April 8, 1882, Adjutant General's Records, National Archives. The date of June 23, given on the Muster Roll, was apparently that on which the discharge received final approval in Washington.
[23] There is no record of Stieffel's ever having been a member of the Soldiers' Home, but the Home's records for the 1880's are very incomplete. However, his discharge gives his forwarding address as that institution, and there is definite record of the date of his death and interment there.
[24] Report of Brig. Gen. R. B. Marcy, September 24, 1867, document no. 1,000, AGO, Department of Missouri, vol. 4, 1867, Civil War Branch, National Archives.
[25] Report of Chief of Ordnance, 1867, Washington, War Department, 1868.
[26] George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyenne, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915, p. 235.
[27] Frazier and Robert Hunt, I Fought With Custer: The Story of Sergeant Windolph, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947, p. 92. For an excellent discussion of Indian armament at this period, see John E. Parsons and John S. DuMont, Firearms in the Custer Battle, Harrisburg, The Stackpole Company, 1953.
[28] Marcy's report, op. cit. (footnote 24).
[29] Jack Howland, artist for Harper's Weekly, also pictured Satanta speaking to the commissioners, and with more accuracy in that all the civilian commissioners are visible, but his pictures lack the color and drama of Stieffel's work. See: Harper's Weekly, November 16, 1867.
[30] The records of this treaty meeting are contained in the Office of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives. The final treaties are reproduced in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903, pp. 754-764.
[31] There are several accounts of this. The best, in the opinion of the writer, is in James Mooney's "Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians," 17th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1898, pp. 181-186, 206-210.
[32] See photo taken at later date by Alexander Gardner, Still Picture Branch, National Archives.
[33] An interesting sidelight on Satanta: In the spring of 1867 he accepted a complete general officer's uniform from General Hancock at Fort Dodge and reciprocated shortly afterwards by attacking the post while decked out in his new dress.
[34] Detail and orientation check closely with map of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, sheet 6353 III NW, scale 1:25,000, Army Map Service.
[35] This was identified in Engineer Files, Cartographic Branch, National Archives.
[36] An over-all photographic view of the post is in Still Picture Branch, National Archives. For photos of the officers' quarters and barracks, see Brown and Felton, op. cit. (footnote 2), pp. 98, 128.
[37] See photo in Brown and Felton op. cit. (footnote 2), p 135.
[38] Ibid., pp. 137, 140.
[39] Ibid., pp. 157, 163, and end paper map.
[40] Ewers, op. cit. (footnote 1), pp. 58-61, 1948.
[41] Lower right in the Council Grove scene and in the foreground of the Fort Keogh picture.